Holy $#@&!

What a day!

When we landed last night around 9:30pm, we breezed through customs, picked up our bags and were greeted immediately by our hotel driver. We were whisked into our car, handed cool refreshing towels and bottles of water and before you knew it, we were in a beautiful hotel room overlooking a gorgeous view of the ocean. I cannot say enough nice things about the hotel. It was the Hilton, but has been taken over and renamed the Trident (as of tomorrow). We were lucky enough to be able to use our Hilton reward points and stay here two nights. So, when we were finally settled around midnight last night, we took some ambien and went back to sleep around midnight.

I woke up around 5:00am this morning and fiddled around packing, writing emails, etc. We had breakfast, bought a sim (sp?) card for a cell phone and started our day.

Today consisted of two things: consult for Lasik and our meeting/baseline ultrasound at Rotunda with Dr. Kaushal.

We hired a car for the day for $20. Our driver was very friendly and informative. He took us anywhere we wanted and waited for us for as long as we needed. He was great!

It took us about 45 minutes to get to the eye hospital; then we spent about two hours having drops and tests done. We ran out of time and will return tomorrow morning for a final test before we head out to Pune. It looks like we will be having Lasik next Monday for $900 for both eyes.

Well, on to the important stuff: our meeting with Dr. Kaushal! It is surreal to be sitting in a clinic surrounded by women in saris. At the door, you remove your shoes and put on flip flops. I didn't realize, but Bob brought me over and showed me.

Dr. Kaushal sat with us and discussed all of our questions. Roughly, here are some of the things with discussed. First of all,we will not meet the surrogate, because it is better for us and for her. The surrogates concern is that we will not return for the baby; our concern is that she will leave with the baby; the doctors concern is for her safety and health and that no one tries to take advantage of each other and obeys the contracts. Dr. Kaushal sees no problems, but all of the issuses were discussed. Dr. Kaushal will do her best to "schedule delivery" either through induction or through c-section, so that we can be there when the baby is born. If the baby surprises us, the baby remains at the hospital until we pick him/her/them up. She said that in her experiences, Americans travel home within three weeks with the baby. The US Embassy is excellent (the UK can take a bit longer).

They will do a two-day transfer of all embryos. We were surprised to hear this. We produce between 4 and eight embryos; this will increase our odds and give us the best chances, especially considering the two-day transfer. Dr. Kaushal will not do ICSI; she felt it was unnecessary. We've had three clinics in the past, two of which recommended ICSI and one didn't. We were okay with not doing ICSI this time around.

The surrogate is encouraged to live in surrogate housing, but is ultimately given the choice. These are women with families of their own, and leaving for an extended period is sometimes just not feasible. Our surrogate has not yet decided about whether she will stay in housing part of the time (when she is showing) or the whole time.

I started stimming tonight and am scheduled to return to the clinic on Friday for monitoring. If we were staying locally, truth be told, I would have come in on Thursday. I was started on a pretty high dosage of follistim, but then again it's been a year since my last cycle and now I am 35.

The clinic here, like everything in India, is more laid-back. They don't monitor as much as in the US. Keep in mind that this is my sixth time stimulating, so I have a pretty proven track record for being a good, healthy stimulator. I don't know if they would have monitored more closely if it was my first time around.